Os descaminhos do ouro: questões acerca do modo de administrar e fazer justiça no Antigo Regime - Minas Gerais (1709-1750)

Abstract

This paper has the purpose to analyze how the gold´s detours have contributed to promote some discussions on the Portuguese kingdom and in the colony. The detours was very commonly used by different individuals, and the concern to stop it and the discussions about the better way to collect the ‘quinto’, brought to the debate some matters about values and ideas about it, both at the kingdom and in their colonies. These individuals were inserted into a specific political culture and they brought his values and visions of the world when they migrate, and set it up to the local reality. At the end, they used some strategies to promote the kingdom´s control, but sometimes they used it in order to get own benefits. This paper is based on the idea that they shared the values of a Corporate and Jurisdictional Monarchy, in order to explore two central themes: the colony´s administration by the kingdom and the act to make justice in the monarchy´s era. In order to do that, we are going to analyze the actions of different individuals in face of the gold´s detours that have occurred in Minas Gerais between 1709 and 1750, in order to realize the way these people interact with each other, their game of power, and, the idea of how the political culture of the monarchy´s era legitimated the actions of these men, even when it put in doubt the determinations coming from the metropolis.